Let's go over a brief chronology on the real estate nightmare. At Thanksgiving in 2005, Neddie Jingo commented on the Viriginia Pilgrims Real Estate Pipe Dreams:
There are two exits from this Gilded Ghetto ; both empty directly out onto Route 7, which is one of the busiest highways in the United States. To go in the eastward direction (toward Washington and their jobs), people leaving this neighborhood have to cross the westbound lane and merge eastbound.During rush hour this must be simply impossible. There are no breaks in the traffic. You drive past at 8 AM; queues of Hummers ten deep wait in vain for a break in traffic, gallons of gas burning away as they idle fruitlessly. One is tempted to salute them with a finger. Or worse.
Mother Jones gave us a brief synopsis of what many of these The Home Sweet Lemon buyers discovered once they moved into these Gilded Ghettos:
As a result, contractors throughout the country have been able to feed the U.S. housing boom with little fear of being held accountable for the quality of their work. The faster a house is constructed, the greater the profit, and thus many homes are now built as though on an assembly line, often in as little as 90 days.Contractors “build them spacious and grandiose and give them the appearance of quality,” says Ahmad, whose group tracks both federal and state regulations. Behind the facade, though, are often shoddy workmanship and cheap materials, such as “wood” trim that is actually recycled paper.
In 2008, The Atlantic magazine chronicled the latest slums wreaking havoc on the American Public, who are going to be responsible for bailing out the banks who created this mess in the first place
And now, in 2008, the FDIC is preparing for a shock wave of failed banks.
“Regulators are bracing for well over 100 bank failures in the next 12 to 24 months, with concentrations in Rust Belt states like Michigan and Ohio, and the states that are suffering severe housing-market problems like California, Florida, and Georgia,” said Jaret Seiberg, Washington policy analyst for financial-services firm Stanford Group.
And so it goes.
Posted by Buck Batard at February 26, 2008 02:23 PM
I've owned a housecleaning business here in Maine since my son was a baby (he'll be 14 in May) and I have to tell you....the "bigger nicer" homes I've cleaned are definitely poorly constructed. Not only that, but the contractors painted around the heating ducts instead of taking the time to make it look nice. To the homeowner, they don't seem to care because they're in a nice part of town. It's really a head scratcher to me. If I had their money, I would want the house to be done right. Nope. They just want it and they want it now!
Posted by: KayInMaine on February 26, 2008 8:36 PMI get my hair cut at a high-end "salon" version of a barber college in San Francisco. It's a good place for conversations. A student who cut my hair a couple years ago was funding her studies with equity from a house in the Central Valley suburb of Tracy. She said Tracy by then was at the middle of the commute, not its outer edge -- the outer edge was modesto. For reference, Tracy is the nowhere home of the unlamented former Rep. Richard Pombo. Tracy's specially abusive Southern-style cops got a cameo in Woody Guthrie's *Bound For Glory*. Modesto is even farther from here -- about dead center of the Central Valley, almost halfway to Yosemite. It's the nowhere-town setting for "American Graffiti." Now it's a commuter suburb. Will wonders never cease.
I wonder what became of that hairdressing student. Hope she got that big salon job in time to pay whatever she owes now on that house.
And, yes, any newer house in Tracy is probably made of cardboard. People here will know the Chandler line on that: "The only part of a California house you can't put your foot through is the front door."
Posted by: Martha Bridegam on February 26, 2008 10:33 PMI signed up for a "starter home" with KB Homes back in, hmm, must have been early 2001. After a couple of months it became clear that this home was being shabbily built. I found multiple places where the floors were not sufficiently braced (including one corner of one room where I could jump up and down like a trampoline -- the plywood subflooring wasn't supported *at all* there!), places where flexiduct air conditioner ductwork was run over the rafters in a way that would cut off the air flow as the house aged, the flashing wasn't done right around the windows to keep the water out, and one of the front rooms was not square and they shaved the wall thin to square the room rather than move the wall to where it needed to be, thus making this (load supporting) wall too weak. I finally told'em "I'm outta here, keep my deposit, it's yours" and bought a 50's ranch house made out of concrete block (a common construction material for that era in the Phoenix metropolitian area). At least concrete block is honest, you can't hide shit under drywall and stucco there... and best of all, the house was within walking distance of stores and the downtown shopping district of Scottsdale. What a deal!
- Badtux the Well-housed Penguin